Today, August 6th, 2021, marks the 30th anniversary of when Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched the first web page on the World Wide Web.  I love reading about the early internet mostly as I remember some of it and kind of have a sort of nostalgic place in my heart for early websites and web design.

As of writing this, I’m a few months shy of 29 years old, making the internet just barely older than I am, a fact I would have to remind my students in Japan when I taught them computer science. This stuff is new and moving rapidly. Every year the internet changes and evolves, new trends take off, which is why I find it so exciting.

I’ve built my career on the web, as a Front-End Developer, I get to help grow it and add to it, hopefully in a positive and beautiful way. My father and brother both also owe their careers to the web and it was a driving force for my family’s settlement in DFW. My father, fresh out of seminary and needing a job, had experience working online and using Bulletin Boards as well as tinkering with computers since his childhood. At the time, 1994-1995, many companies in Dallas were hiring anyone with a pulse that knew about computers to come on as tech support for the Windows 95 rollout. Thus, my father started a career in tech which continues until this day.

I was fortunate to grow up with multiple computers in the home and my elementary school was given grants early on for great computer labs. So post-college, with the ink still wet on my film diploma, I got a job in marketing, helping to support developers at an agency in Dallas.

I’ve gone on to teach computer science, and grow my marketing/development career, all thanks to the world wide web. I’m young, the web is young, and just as I feel hopeful, with my thirties approaching, that it will be the best decade yet, and I hope likewise the web will find similar growth in its thirties alongside me.

So happy birthday WWW, and thank you Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

P.S. at the end of each of my quarterly tests while teaching computer science in Japan, I asked the same question: Who invented the World Wide Web?

 

We’re back in Texas. It is with sad hearts that we moved back to Texas as we’ve called Tokyo our home for three years now. In early April my work made it clear I would not be a part of their long term plans. Although I had a job for the next two years I read the tea leaves and decided it was time. The covid-19 pandemic played a part in the decision as well too. Japan’s government suspiciously downplayed and seemed to under report case numbers until the Olympics were called off. I no longer felt comfortable in our situation and decided it was better to weather the storm closer to a support network back in Dallas. I will always cherish my time in Tokyo and the people and friends I met there. It was an unforgettable time. However all good things must come to an end.

We are looking forward to the next exciting chapter in our lives.